Pakistan to install 40 EV charging stations in big cities, motorways

Pakistan will install 40 charging stations for electric vehicles (EVs) in big cities and on motorways, a meeting of a steering committee formed to develop a policy to promote local manufacture and early adoption of Electric Vehicles (EV) decided on Tuesday.

The government had recently notified the nine-member high-powered committee under the federal minister for industries and production.

Pakistan had introduced the National Electric Vehicles Policy in 2019, which provided concessionary duty and tax structure, soft credit schemes and other incentives. However, these could only be partially implemented in 2021.

The country's Engineering Development Board (EDB) reports that there are 345,000 two and three wheeler electric vehicles in Pakistan, out of a total of 28 million EVs worldwide, and that number is growing by about 25% annually.

Since 2022, the government has issued 49 licenses to two- and three-wheeler electric vehicle manufacturers with an annual production capacity of four million vehicles.

The first license for the production of four-wheeled EVs with a 6,000 annual vehicle capacity was granted in September of this year, and EDB is hopeful that the manufacturer would likely start production before the end of the year.

Pakistan has set a target of 30% new EV sales by 2030, and the government believes it can save $1.5 billion, according to statistics available with Nukta.

According to the EBD, the key difficulties to EV adoption include price restrictions, charging infrastructure, battery life, and a lack of comprehensive policies to address the entire value chain.